Soccer it to them

09 Mar 2006 | News
We stray from the usual stuff of R&D to report on a development that will doubtless appeal to those sad souls who are preparing for World Cup fever.

Internet stories are rare here, they don't usually contain  much in the way of real technology, but we couldn't resist passing on news from the Fraunhofer-Institut für Graphische Datenverarbeitung (IGD). The lab has put out a press release about Servingo (shouldn't that be Servingoal?), a new portal linked to the World Cup in Germany some time soon. (We don't follow sports.) "The personalized portal Servingo offers a central point of access to a wide variety of services for soccer fans in Germany for the World Cup, ranging from a navigation system to an event and location finder."

The Fraunhofer put out the press release because the Computer Graphics Center (ZGDV) coordinated  the Servingo project while the IGD and the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics (IML) are among the contributors to its technological development. They seem to be up to some clever tricks with computer graphics.

Dirk Balfanz of the ZGDV, project manager Servingo, is quoted as saying “You can view the action from the referee's perspective, you can take up a virtual position behind the goal, or you can even see it all through the eyes of the goalkeeper.“ Well, somebody must like this sort of thing.

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